It’s Officially Safe To Eat Food Off The Floor

Forget everything you once knew about food hygiene; a recent study will have us all eating off the tiles…

Hands up who uses the five second rule… C’mon, we’ve all been there. If the toast falls and lands butter-side-up, grab it, dust it off and eat.

Well, prepare to have your minds blown, because those five seconds have just become 30 minutes.

Aston University in Birmingham, England, recently carried out a survey which proves ‘rigid foods’ like toast, biscuits, and crisps can be eaten up to half an hour after they’ve made contact with the ground.

Lead researcher, Professor Anthony Hilton, told the Daily Mail, “Not only do they not pick up much bacteria on impact with the floor, but they don’t get any additional contamination over time.”

He continued, “It’s less safe to leave damper, stickier food, such as cooked pasta on the floor, so the five-second rule still applies to them. However the chances of anyone getting ill from dropping food on the floor at home are infinitesimally small.”

The survey shows that women are most likely to eat food from the floor, and that 87 per cent of the 500 people surveyed have applied the five-second rule.

Anthony adds that, “Obviously, food covered in visible dirt shouldn’t be eaten, but as long as it’s not obviously contaminated, the science shows that food is unlikely to have picked up harmful bacteria from a short time spent on an indoor floor.”

That being said, the social ramifications of eating a cookie that’s been lying on the floor for half an hour makes the snack slightly less tempting…